Thursday Sketches

Still struggling with landscapes and backgrounds, but I'm forcing myself to do a little bit each day. I haven't finished a piece in a while since I tend to put a lot of time into overworking things and they still don't work out. So lately I've been just experimenting to see what happens with quick sketches and practicing on really looking at my source material.

Unfortunately the last one there looks like something I would've done in high school. I lost track of the values and over saturated all the colors, so back to the drawing board...

2 minute poses

1 hour from reference

45 minutes from reference

Wednesday's Sketches

60 second poses

1 hour sketch from reference

Tuesday Sketches...

All from reference.

60 second poses

Some Cave - 1 hour

Female Knight In Armor - 1 hour

Everything's Green...

Breathe Deeply...

This 30 minute landscape concept sketch is about the only thing I have to show today. I'm still putting time into a work in progress and tried a hair tutorial that turned out hideous. That's all the time I had to work on anything today...sigh. Tomorrow is another day, or so they tell me.

Landscape Sketch

I spent about 2.5 hours on this one. I blocked in the shapes and then started getting more specific with it, eventually zooming in pretty tight to get some areas to read a bit more. Looks amateur as hell, but I'm definitely out of my comfort zone with this sort of thing.

The thing I've been looking at with other artists is how to convey the "idea" of bricks and structures without adding every single shape and block. In this case the strokes looked pretty plain and flat and my attempt at suggestion didn't really work out.

Finally, the perspective is wonkier than I thought while I was working on it. I don't think my underlying perspective grid was what I needed, but ultimately it was just an oversight on my part to keep track of the perspective. The poor thing looks like it's about to collapse in on itself.

Finally Over The Plague...

That was a wonderful week of sickness. Now the nonsense is over and I can get back to work. Here's some sketches.

I'm trying to force myself to do some landscapes and things that really intimidate me.

Thursday Hour Sketch

Mr. Smooth-Face

Another orc. Limited myself to an hour for this sketch since I've got some kind of plague.

Quick Wednesday Sketch

Another Orc...

Tuesday Sketch

 Sketch after Serge Birault.

Chocolate Dragon Fairy

Yummy Chocolate Dragon Fairy

Saturday Night Last Minute Quick Sketch

Ha Ha...JUST missed publishing on the 10th.

REALLY quick block sketch using the awesome 12 brush set from the bad-ass concept artist Shaddy Safadi. His YouTube tutorials are pure gold.

Also: DETHKLOK. That is ALL.

Cute Monster #4

Warm Up Sketch

Wednesday Sketches

Tuesday Sketches

I finally broke out my trial version of SketchBook Pro to see how it worked. Here are a few quick sketches I did with it.

For a $60 program, it does a much better job of approximating pencil, ink, and real brushes than Photoshop. It also has some neat features like a steady-line tool, a symmetry tool, and the ability to rotate the canvas on the fly.

Here's a horrible free sketch I did on a single layer with one of the default chalk brushes in Photoshop. I worked it for a while but couldn't bring any values out of it:

Cute Monster #3 Final

Happy Birthday Brad!

"None Shall Pass"

Brad and I met during my freshman year of college, so next to my mother, he's the person I've known the longest so far.

Apart from the usual college pastimes in which we partook, we also had a mutual love for Monty Python. Once we got rolling, we were those nerds at the party you couldn't get to stop quoting them.

There's such a rich amount of Python material to draw from that I had a difficult time choosing this loony, but here he is.  Hope you have a great birthday, buddy!

Cute Monster #3 Color Sketch

Quick color sketch done with default Photoshop chalk brush.

Monday's Gesture Sketches

Cute Monsters 1 & 2

Orcs 1

Happy Birthday Lori!

Crazy Pink Flamingo...
I saw them play Miami back in '53.

Lori is the only person with the temerity to challenge me to an arm wrestling match when we barely knew one another...I mean look at me, my massive tree-trunk arms would have sent a lesser person scrambling back to KittenVille. But not Lori, she was ready to take on all comers.

Here's to you having a kick-ass birthday Lori!

Also: Kadavar. That is all.

Happy Birthday Lisa!

"I got no Heron my head...thank you and goodnight!"

My friend Lisa is an avid bird watcher...she's got the gear, she's got the will, and she's got the way to spot a bird anywhere. She's the only person I know that takes trips to southeastern Arizona to bird watch, and I admire her passion and tenacity with her hobby.

I hope you had a fantastic birthday Lisa!

The Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) is a large wading bird in the heron family Ardeidae, common near the shores of open water and in wetlands over most of North America and Central America as well as the Caribbean and the Galápagos Islands.--Via Wikipedia.

Warforged Head Concepts

These black & white head designs kept me busy for several days. The original sketches in my sketchbook took mere minutes, but rendering them in Photoshop took me a while this time. The middle one on the top row is my favorite, since I imagined him wishing he were "alive" and crafting a molded metal mouth-piece to appear more human.

Warforged are golems crafted from metal, wood, and leather and magically given life in the Eberron D&D campaign setting. While they were produced in large numbers for the battlefields of the massive wars of the time, now that the kingdoms are at peace, their primary functions are much less in demand.  Each Warforged has its own personality and identity, and they were given their freedom and recognized as citizens after the wars ended.

I've been fascinated with the concept since I read about them on the Eberron wiki. By all rights, these dudes are immortal, and are able to customize their bodies themselves. The idea of these guys having individual identities and living among mankind is kind of interesting to me. Many of them have exiled themselves from humanity are are dwelling under the leadership of the mysterious Lord of Blades in the wastelands of the Mournland.

Happy Birthday Carole!

Run.

Carole has been a good friend for many years, so for her birthday I depicted some creatures she invented way back in the day.

A couple of weeks ago I was taking care of a friend who needed some emergency surgery, so I kind of stumbled with my artistic productivity (and exercise.) This is the first piece I've done in a while, although I have been working in my sketchbook a bit.

As far as exercise updates go, they're pretty sporadic so I don't see any reason to post those. I'm working on getting back on the art & exercise horse.

Creature Concepts #1

I recently discovered the Feng Zhu Design tutorials, and one of them showed his process for creating creature concepts starting with strong silhouettes.

First I start with some abstract silhouettes with a black brush like this:

From there you fill in the details with your imagination and as many tones as you can muster, and you wind up with something like the image at the top. It's kind of a neat way to design, and you utilize your imagination greatly. Since I fill in the details on separate layers, I'm able to do an infinite number of variations for each one without destroying the silhouettes.

The first batch I did wasn't that great, but here it is anyway:

I added a little bit of color to these originally, but I didn't have enough tones in there to pull out the forms.

Fitness Update:

Week 1 - Day 3: Shoulders/Arms (missed abs from lack of energy)

Monday's Landscape Study

I messed with the values and brush strokes on this thing for a long time and I had to call it because I wasn't getting anywhere.

Fitness Update:

Week 1 - Day 2: 30 min. Walk/Run Treadmill Intervals - 2 miles
(Unfortunately, all of the P90X cardio routines hurt my knees immensely, so I have to go to the YMCA for those days.)

Monday's Warmup Sketch

Boomstick

Fighting Through The Failure

I had several paragraphs written about this study, but it was accidentally erased and I think I've spent too much time letting the whole process surrounding this thing bother me.

Short version: It's terrible, I hate it, I gave up on it several times after trying several times to get the features right, and eventually just tried to get the colors, tones, and blending technique that Vermeer used in the original. I felt as if I had a moral victory for pushing through and trying to work on it after giving up, and felt obligated to put the horrible thing up here after that pontificating I did in my last post.  The End.

The Dutch girl with a red hat suddenly became
the Asian lady with an underbite and a  red hat.

Girl with a Red Hat
Johannes Vermeer
c. 1665-1666

Feet #1 & Other Thoughts

First of all, a word of explanation.

I've been reading and studying some artists online that have inspired me to work harder at my art. One suggestion they've been throwing out there for people trying to get better is to post your updates and progress no matter how bad they are. For me, it's chronicling my journey so that I can hopefully see marked improvement over time and serve as a good example to others. As embarrassing as a lot of this stuff is, and despite most of it being nothing pretty to look at, I'm throwing it out there for myself as much as for you all.

I just don't get the attraction
Mr. Tarantino...

So here's my start to Sunday's studies. Feet and hands have so many minute curves that the drawing will look completely off if you don't get the essential ones in the right spots...it can be maddening.

Gesture Sketches #3

So....tired.......

"The burly mechanic (from Raiders of the Lost Ark) was played by Pat Roach, a stuntman and professional wrestler who appeared in all three of the original movies." -- Indiana Jones Wiki (Did you know that was a thing? I didn't either!)

Hands #2

I've got a lot of errands to run today and probably won't be at the computer until late tonight. So before I got things started I did some additional hand sketches. Have a good Saturday!

Supergirl 1

Better Luck Next Time

Ugh...I was so beat tonight that this was all I could manage to do. I pretty much had to force myself to pick up that tablet stylus and do something. Luckily I was able to get some Bridgman studies done in my sketchbook earlier.

Hope you're all having a better Friday than I am.

"Supergirl is a female counterpart to Superman. As his cousin, she shares his super powers and vulnerability to Kryptonite. She was created by writer Otto Binder and designed by artist Al Plastino in 1959."--Wikipedia

Ladybug

I like this one for a change.